


pick ourselves undone

by orphan_account



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Beth Greene Lives, Seriously fuck Gimple I'll do what I want and what I want is Beth alive, The rest of the gang will show up eventually, serious spoilers for Coda
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-04
Updated: 2014-12-08
Packaged: 2018-02-28 02:31:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2715680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Her name was Beth Greene and just like that, she exhausted her knowledge about herself. Beth Lives AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> IM SO DEEP IN DENIAL  
> beth greene is alive squad for life man i’m ride or die  
> [this post](http://aerishere.tumblr.com/post/104201378459/those-who-dont-wanna-keep-probably-totally) totally convinced me. Read it and come scream with me please (That whole tumblr as a whole pretty much told me to write this and some ideas are drawn from it)  
> pardon if anything about her death is wrong seeing as i only watched it once and i was bawling the whole time

Her head hurts.

While Beth was never a stranger to migraines, this is the worst thing she’s ever felt. It feels like her head is about to explode and when she opens her eyes, a bright light blind her and she instinctively snaps her eyes shut, wanting to cry or go to sleep or even just die.

She snips that thought in the bud though. She’s Beth Greene and she wants to live more than anything.

As soon as she thinks that however, she reaches the horrible realization that thats all she knows about her. Panic raises and she tries to think of any other facts, of anything that would give her any information about herself.

Her birthday? _Beth Greene._ What is her favorite color? _Beth Greene._ Where was she?

_Beth fucking Greene._

She breathes in quickly, trying to calm down, but it doesn’t help and if anything, her head starts to pound even harder. It hurts, oh god it hurts--

“Breathe in,”A calm voice cuts through the agony and she wants to scream but instead, she fights to listen to the man. “Listen to me, OK? Breathe in with me. In, out, in out.”

His voice is smooth and gentle and she listens, desperately trying to get rid of the pain. She doesn’t know how long she lays there, struggling to regain control of herself and stop her attack, but the man never falters in her mantra and eventually she calms down.

Sleep, however, calls her and she only manages to pry her eyes open long enough to see a dark-skinned man in a tan jacket kneeling next to her before unconsciousness claims her.

* * *

 

_“I get it now.”Beth hears herself saying and she jerks around, trying to spot the origin of her own voice. All she sees is darkness and the words repeat themselves._

_“I get it now.”_

_“I get it now.”_

_She wants to scream out_ Stop! _as the words echo around her but nothing comes out._

_“I get it now.”_

_For a brief moment, she sees a dark-haired woman and her staring each other down when she suddenly moves, something shiny gripped in her hands._

_There’s a bang, a loud cry, and then there’s nothing._

* * *

 When she wakes up again, the pain in her head has subsided and when she opens her eyes, she doesn’t immediately close them. It still takes a while though for her eyes to adjust to the brightness but when they do, she sees that she’s laying on a dirty old bed in a dirty old room.

The curtains are stained yellow, nearly falling apart by the seams, but they’re heavy and they do a decent enough job of blocking out the sunlight from entering. Next to her bed, there’s a small dresser with chipped pink paint and a dish placed on top of it. There’s leftover bits of food, meat and some fruits (A rather odd combination if you asked her but she didn’t question it), and her stomach suddenly rumbles.

Licking her chapped lips, she reaches over to grab the little that is left but is instantly stopped by something on her wrist. An alarm screeching in her head, she looks and feels her stomach clench at the sight of shiny handcuffs keeping her restrained to the bed.

Her mind instantly races to think about horror stories about women stolen away to be used as sex slaves and her heart starts beating in her chest and, overcome with a feeling of anger and despair, she tries to yank herself away. Logically, she knows that she’s too weak in her current state to do anything and even if she was healthy, she doubts she could break out of handcuffs through sheer strength, but she keeps struggling, bile rising in her throat.

“You’re awake,”the same male voice from early cuts through to her and she snaps her head to the source, immediately regretting it as it causes her world to spin. “I wouldn’t do that. Your head’s been through enough.”

“My head?”She manages out, wincing at the pain wracking her body, but she fights through it and glares at the man. He’s tall, at least to her which wasn’t a grand feat, and he looks as if he’s thirty. Its the look in his eyes that gets her however. They don’t contain crazed lust like she had been expecting from her captor. Instead, they’re sorrowful and looking at her as if she’s the most pitiful creature he’s ever seen.

Anger immediately rises in her. She’s not pitiful, she’s strong and he’s going to tell her why the hell she’s chained to the bed.

She voices her thoughts to him and he raises a brow.

“Thought you were going to die. I wasn’t about to have you turn on me,”he offers as an explanation and she furrows her eyebrows.

Dying? And what did he mean by turning on him? It wasn’t as if she could betray him seeing as she doesn’t have the faintest idea as to who he is.

“You don’t know?”Now he looks confused and she shoots him a look.

“Know what?!”She cries, exasperated. “All I know is that my name is Beth Greene, I have absolutely zero idea as to where I am and what happened, and I’m chained to a bed. That’s it!

He walks over, kneeling next to her bed, and she gives him a weary look.

“I’m going to need you to remain calm when I explain things, alright?” He tells her sternly, his dark eyes flicking over her head. “If you have another attack like you did earlier, the shock could do enough to finish off what the bullet couldn’t.”

_Bullet?_

Her head already beginning to spin, she nods, trying to steel herself against whatever truths he was about to drop on her.

“I found you five days ago buried. The only reason I did was because you were still alive and Walkers were pawing at your grave-”

“Walkers?”She interrupts, doing her best to ignore the whole dug in a grave thing. She would deal with that when he told her everything that happened. He lets out a low whistle.

“You really don’t know anything,”he murmurs but raising his voice to answer her question. “Around two and a half years ago, the dead rose and started to kill anything living. You get bit and you turn into one of them. If you die, you turn into one of them. We never stood a chance. Most of us are wiped off and the rest… Well, we’re surviving best we can.”

His explanation is brisk and to the point and she wants to laugh at him.

The dead are walking? What a load of bullshit. It sounds like a conspiracy theory to be found out on the internet and not something to be presented as fact.

But… he looked completely serious and that gives her pause. Maybe he was right… After all, that would explain the handcuffs and the desolate nature of the room.

“Continue,”she finally says, her mouth dry. He looks at her, as if checking to see if she could handle anymore information, and once he’s satisfied that she’s not coming apart at the seams, he opens his mouth to keep talking.

“I dug you up and saw that you were still breathing. Whoever buried you thought you were dead and with good reason. You were shot in the head. You’re lucky to have survived at all.”

Everything around her screeches to a stop and she stares at him.

What?

Shot? In the head?

“Here,”his voice is soft again and he sounds like a father speaking to his young child. Slowly, he reaches over and grabs her one free wrist and brings it up to the side of her head and sure enough, there’s a hole.

A flat out hole. It’s a dip in her skull and it feels gross and gooey as if it hadn’t finished healing yet and she instantly yanks her hand away from it, her mouth dropping open in her horror.

“I-I…”She stammers, struggling to find the words to describe what she’s feeling right now. Hell, she’s not even sure she knows what she’s feeling. Confusion is the only emotion that really stands out to her.

“You’re lucky,”he repeats his earlier assessment. “You may just be the luckiest person to walk this earth. Whoever buried you cared enough to put you in a coffin so you weren’t just covered in dirt. It was shallow enough for Walkers to still be able to smell you and be attracted to your spot. You’re lucky that I was a doctor before the world went to hell and you’re lucky that nothing important was damaged. The fact you can hold a conversation with me and move and see is miracle enough.”

A miracle? She faintly remembers an old man patting her head and telling her that angels were real and they would guide and protect her, showering her in miracles when she needed them.

She can’t help but wonder where they are now.

“The only things you really lost were your group and your memory.” He glances at the side of her head. “And well, a chunk of your skull.

Beth lets out a bitter laugh.

“Only,”she grumbles. She didn’t care about her small of skull missing - She had survived a gunshot to her head and she would rather be missing some of herself than be dead - but she cared about whoever had buried her and her memories. If they had cared enough to give her a burial now, when the world had gone to shit if the man wasn’t leading her on, then she obviously must have cared about them too. They could have helped her with her memories and she wouldn’t be lost and confused as she is now.

“Do you remember anything at all?”The man presses and she nods.

“My name is Beth Greene.” She leaves the _and I’m a survivor left_ unsaid. He tilts his head as if prompting her and she gives him a sour look. “And that’s it. That’s all I know.”

He merely shrugs. “It was more than I was expecting.” He reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out a key, reaching over and unlocking her from the handcuffs. She rubs at the angry red marks on her wrist and turns her attention back to him.

“And what’s your name?”She asks and he sighs as he stands up, grabbing the plate.

“I’m Morgan Jones.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you guys are unaware, team delusional has made a petition to bring our beloved beth back or at the very least, express our anger over her death and deep love for everything she/EK did  
> [sign here](https://www.change.org/p/the-walking-dead-bring-beth-back?recruiter=190053671&utm_campaign=signature_receipt&utm_medium=email&utm_source=share_petition) if you haven’t already! (We’re nearing 24K!)

It takes five days for Beth to able to walk on her own and its almost her own circle of hell. Even if she can’t remember much (or really anything), she knows that she’s an active person and being permanently banished to her small room to recover is cruel punishment. Morgan had taken it upon himself to make sure she didn’t strain herself and whenever she brings up the subject of going outside for a few minutes, he shuts her down quickly, rattling off all the horrible horrible things that could happen.

It wasn’t her fault she just couldn’t sit still. Sitting still always led to her thinking and her thoughts weren’t someone she wanted as company right now. All her thoughts had to tell her were that anyone who knew who she was and what happened to her thought she was dead and left. All she has is Morgan and while she is thankful that he was keeping her alive and helping her, she desperately wants someone who knows her.

The door creaks open and she glances over to watch Morgan walk in, his hands holding a tan jacket that was almost identical to his.

“C’mon,”he says as he hands it over to her, quickly moving to peer out the window. “We gotta get a move on. Most of the walkers have moved on and I want to reach Rick before winter really sits in.”

There was that name again. Rick. He had told her on the second day that he was tracking this group, the leader of them being a man he had saved and who had saved him in return. She was nearly positive she didn’t know the man (It was statistically impossible. What were the odds that the man who saved her had a link with someone she knew?) but she couldn’t deny the strange feeling of deja vu at the sound of his name.

“Can you get up on your own?”Morgan looks over to her and she shoots him a disgruntled look. He only gives her a wry smile and exits quickly, his footsteps echoing in the quiet house. She takes a deep breath, swinging her legs so they were touching the floor, and slowly, she drags herself up.

The action doesn’t leave her gasping for breath like it had the first night but she still stands there for a few seconds, one hand clasped to a bedpost and the other tightly clutching the tan jacket to her chest. When she finally manages to slow her breathing down to a normal pace, she begins to slowly head towards the door, tugging the jacket on as she goes.

“You alright?”Morgan asks her when she finally reaches him at the end of the hallway, his eyes scanning her for any sign of exhaustion.

“Yeah, fine,”she manages a tight smile, carefully hiding the fact that every bone in her body was screaming for her to lay down and sleep. She’d had enough of that. If he were to force her right now to go back to the shitty room, she would riot.

He doesn’t though and he simply guides her to the front door, always keeping a careful eye on her. As quietly as he can, he cracks the door open, peering out, and Beth feels a small tension in her chest. She wasn’t sure of what was out there and she wasn’t entirely sure if she would be able to handle it.

Her mind still couldn’t rekindle the idea of the dead walking and the world going to hell to reality. It seemed like something that was from a TV show or a comic book, not real life. Part of her still thought that Morgan was just a psycho, albeit one who provided her with excellent care.

‘ _Well,_ ’she grimly locks her jaw, steeling herself for when he would fully open the door and step out. ‘ _I’ll see soon enough’_.

“Alright, there’s only two of them out there,”He turns to look her straight in the eye and she’s sucks in a breath when he pulls a knife out of his jacket, handing it to her with the blade facing him. “I’ll handle them but watch your ass, you hear? Out there, I can only do so much for you.”

The tension in her chest grows until its almost painful but she still nods, taking the weapon.

Slowly, he opens the door fully and the sunlight rushes in, filling the living room with light. Outside, they’re surrounded by trees and she can faintly hear birds chirping in the distance. It almost looks like something on a postcard.

The shambling dead bodies heading towards them ruin it.

Beth immediately wants to retreat back into the room but her body refuses to move, forcing her to watch as they slowly but surely make their way towards them. Pieces of flesh are falling off their starved frames and the stench feels overwhelmingly strong. They make inhuman sounds, loud groans that drown out the sweet songs of the birds, and she immediately knows what happens if she lets them near her.

They’ll tear her apart and eat her alive, leaving nothing but bones.

Drawing strength from an unknown well, she brings her knife up to defend herself, her hands not even shaking.

She never gets a chance, however, since Morgan is already moving and he pushes one to the ground, spinning to stab the other one through the skull. Before the one that is sprawling out on the dirt can pick itself up, he stomps on its head, sending blood and brain flying.

Beth expects her stomach to clench and empty itself or for her to at least feel horror at the bloodshed but there’s only a wave of relief before she’s moving forward to stand next to him.

“You have to get them in the brain,”It’s not a question and Morgan doesn’t bother to look at her, too busy cleaning off his knife.

“Anything else and they’ll keep on coming,”he replies and she nods silently, her eyes sliding to the knife in her hands.

She can defend herself - she knows how even if she doesn’t know why. Her gut tells her Beth Greene use to be a sweet girl that didn’t even like watching horror movies with body counts higher than one.

Its different now. The Beth Greene that is here, standing next to Morgan, is a Beth Greene that knows to survive.

And that’s all that matters.

* * *

  _The sword swings and she screams. She screams as she watches the old man with the kindest eyes she’s ever seen die before her, his head hanging by a few threads of skin, and she screams as the madman pulls the sword back and swings again._

_She can’t stop screaming._

_Even as the guns begin to fire around her and there’s one in her hands and she somehow knows how to use it, her world is caving in on her and everything is screaming around her. The image of the old man’s head just hanging there, a small smile frozen on his lips, flashes in front of her eyes whenever she blinks and she just wants it to stop. Her chest feels like it’ll explode and she can’t breathe and she feels herself crying, still firing the gun._

_“We gotta go, Beth.” A voice breaks through the screaming and she turns and the only thing she sees is a pair of blue eyes peering down at her._

* * *

 She wakes up with dried tears on her cheeks.

“Beth?”Morgan asks and she hurriedly wipes off any evidence of her dream, turning to look at him. He’s sitting up against a tree and she’s right next to him, covered in a plastic tarp. “Are you OK?”

“Yeah,”Her voice cracks and she clears her throat, suddenly furious at her body for betraying the emotions she’s feeling. “Just had a bad dream. No big deal.”

“Did you remember anything?”His voice is gentle and she doesn’t respond, simply laying back down and curling up into a ball.

She hadn’t gained any knowledge about herself. Instead, she felt like she lost everything.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Instead of studying or doing my test, I wrote  
> Beth Greene deserves it.

**Author's Note:**

> This probably waaaaaay off in terms of time seeing as Morgan shows up at the church months after Rick’s gang moves out but you know, fuck that canon.  
> Seriously just fuck it.  
> This'll take me forever to write but I swear I'll finish this before February  
> Probably


End file.
